Repercussions Of the House Of M
by Nathalia Mueller
Summary: A compilation of ficlets portraying how their lives changed when many mutants lost their powers, on M Day.
1. Lorna Dane On M Day

**Title: **Lorna Dane on M-Day**  
Author:** NathaliaMueller**  
Rating: **K.

**Timeframe: **Decimation.**  
Characters: **Polaris.**  
Genre: **Angst.**  
Summary: **Polaris of the X-Men has to deal with the loss of her powers after M-Day.**  
A/N: **I wrote this before reading _What Lorna Saw _and thus didn't know this Doop thing (that wasn't to my liking) would happen. I would have preferred it not to happen but I added the last two sentences as a kind of foreshadowing to it.

Lorna Dane, the X-Man Polaris, looked into the mirror and even though she sees herself, she doesn't feel like herself. She had always been defined by her powers to control magnetism, but now they were gone, the part of her that had led her to become a hero had vanished. Now, she wasn't Polaris any longer, she was Lorna Dane.

Never again would she be able to do what she had done without much thinking in the past, never again would she fight evil. Now she was a mere woman without a purpose, with nowhere to go.

How could that have happened to her? Why her? She was the daughter of the most powerful mutant alive, Magneto, and she had been robbed of her powers. With such a father, one should have been sure that the crisis would have no effect. How could she have been reduced to a mere homo sapiens?

She reached up and touched her long, green hair. It had been the first hint, the first sign of her being a mutant and she had tried to hide it in the beginning. Now that she knew she had lost it, it angered her that once she hadn't been proud of it. Her flowing hair was still green, but as it grew, it would turn to a normal colour, blond or brown perhaps, and she would look like an ordinary human being, the last little part of her mutancy would be lost and she would probably never again be able to restore it.

It sounded haughty and arrogant, but Lorna thought that she had the RIGHT to have her powers. She was the daughter of the best-known mutant on Earth, on Genosha she had nearly been worshipped, called a princess ... She had been one of the few to survive the massacre on Genosha. She had been through so much and still, they had stripped her of her powers, of one of the things that defined her. She had no place to go now, nowhere to turn. She couldn't stay at the mansion, there was no place for her, here. She couldn't bear the thought of having to see the other mutants who still had their powers fight while she had to go hiding. No, she would have to leave, to follow this strange urge she was feeling. The future had something in store for her.


	2. Charles Xavier On M Day

**Title: **Decimation – Charles Xavier On M-Day**  
Author:** Nathalia Mueller**  
Rating: **PG.

**Timeframe: **Decimation.**  
Characters: **Charles Xavier.**  
Genre: **Angst.**  
Summary: **ProfessorCharles "X" Xavier, founder of the X-Men and the mightiest telepath on Earth wakes up to find his world shattered.

**Date Of Creation:** 04-25-06.

**Word Count: **1173.**  
A/N: **I wrote _Lorna Dane On M-Day_ as a stand-alone, but yesterday I felt the urge to write about Xavier on M-Day and decided to expand a single ficlet into a somewhat larger project detailing how different characters felt on M-Day. In my opinion, this ficlet is better than the one on Lorna.  
This story takes place before Xavier's return in _Deadly Genesis #5_. It happens at about the same time as _House Of M: The Day After_.

I woke up in Scotland. Why Scotland I will never know. If it had been England near Oxford University where I once studied or Genosha where I was when Wanda changed everything, I would have understood it, but Scotland is a total mystery to me ... maybe she wanted to remind me of Moira.

I was awoken by a strange itching in my legs, a thing I hadn't experienced in quite a while and shouldn't have experienced then because I shouldn't be able to fell my legs at all. I tried to ignore it, pretend it wasn't there because I knew it was nothing but a dream. It couldn't be anything but a dream. I lost the use of my legs long ago and even though their health has been restored more than once through history, I should be paralysed.

But this was an extremely persistent itching and so I sat up in my bed and reached down to the part of my leg that didn't feel quite right and scratched it. For a dream, it felt peculiarly satisfying.

I opened my eyes, rubbed the sand out of them to find myself in a small room that had been furnished scarcely. The bed I was lying in, a table and a chair, a cupboard and a bookcase, paper was spread throughout the entire room as if I had been researching on something before going to bed but I knew I hadn't been doing this because I couldn't even remember ever having been in this room.

The last thing I remembered was Wanda Maximoff, the Scarlet Witch, the daughter of a friend of mine, a mutant able to wrap reality around her. I had tried to help her but I wasn't able to do so, I couldn't help her to regain her sanity, she had already fallen too deep.

When closing my eyes I could see me, leading a team of heroes to Wanda's shelters, and then, without an explanation, everything around me turned white and the next think I remember was waking up with this itching in my leg.

Then I realised that she must have twisted reality once again and this was why I had ended up here. I focused my mental powers to locate her ... but nothing. There was no sign of her. I tried again, this time focusing on Scott Summers, one of my most loyal X-Men, the one I had used most, lied to so often, but again, I couldn't feel anything. Tears streamed down my cheeks. Did this mean that he was gone? How was this possible? He had always been a survivor ...

Desperately, I reached out for anyone, no matter whom, trying to locate the sentient being closest to me and once again I failed.

What was happening? Wanda couldn't have exterminated all life on this planet, could she? No, there had to be another explanation.

I couldn't control my thoughts any longer. Tears were running down my face uncontrollably now, my entire body was shaking. What was going on here?

The next thing I knew, I was standing by the table, the daily newspaper in front of me and even though my vision was blurred by the tears I was crying, I could read today's headline.

Mutants All Over The World Lose Their Powers.

I hadn't to read any further to know what had happened and I wouldn't have been able to do so anyway because the tears only got more intense.

I lost balance and sank onto the wooden floor that was covered with books, folders and leaves of paper, and covering my face with my hands.

"Wanda, what have you done?"

I yelled this question at the top of my lungs even though I knew I would get no answer. I didn't have enough auto-control left and so I just remained where I was, crying for the many mutants that had lost their powers, but mostly for the loss of my mental powers.

I have no idea how long I remained there, sprawled on the floor, I was totally unaware of time or my surroundings as I had never been before.

After what could have been hours or minutes, I returned to my old self or as much of it as there was left.

With the help of my upper body and my arms, I tried to sit up but I didn't manage to do so and without really knowing what I was doing, I used my legs to help even though I knew I wouldn't be able to move them at all. And there it was, the next shock: I was able to move my legs!  
I guess I should have felt overjoyed, but I didn't. The loss of my mental powers was way too big for me to think about the fact that I seemingly had regained the use of my legs.

Sitting up, my empty gaze fixed the wall in front of me, but I didn't really see it, I didn't see anything.

I felt lost and empty, helpless. I didn't feel like myself. I had been confined to a wheelchair for years, and I had never really expected to be able to walk ever again and now that I could, I didn't care because I had lost something in return, something that meant so much more to me than my legs. After all these years, I had gotten used to sitting in a wheelchair, it hadn't been such a great deal. I had hoped to be able to walk again, one day, but I hadn't really believed it possible.

Now I realised that over the twelve years, my body had become a shell, every day a bit more, without me noticing. My real strength had been in my head, a section of my brain that had been more developed than most others'. It was a lot bigger than it should have been and it had been the centre of my mental powers.

For so long I was the world's greatest telepath. I could see what remained hidden to the rest of the world. I could read people like open books, rewrite them if I wanted to, I could even destroy the words that formed the book by pouring a glass of water over them. I could do things with my mind others would not have understood.

Most people forgot how powerful I actually was because I never used all of my strength, but I could have controlled or killed a whole population with a mere thought.

And now, all this was gone. My perception had been reduced to that of a mere human being, but I felt blind.

Wanda Maximoff had tricked me. She had given me what I most desired, the use of my legs, but in return she had taken away my mental powers, only to make me realise that my legs were only secondary, that my telepathy was actually what I cherished most.

Now, I really knew what it was like to be a cripple.


End file.
